Metamorphosis
by LindenMae
Summary: He wasn’t sure if the idiot heard him but it didn’t matter because he knew that the idiot knew whether he said it aloud or not. He said it because at some point they had turned a page in their lives and it had become the truth. 8059
1. Chapter 1

**Don't own Katekyo Hitman Reborn!**

Gokudera was not sure when sex with Yamamoto mutated from the brutal, mind numbing fucks that left him gasping and panting and helped him to forget, into something tender and slow, something more akin to making love. He had no idea when he had turned that corner in his life that possessed him to _kiss_ the idiot instead of bite him. It was almost as if one day he had just woken up and things were different and he wasn't as angry as he used to be and somehow, he was certain, it was the idiot's fault.

It wasn't as if the other guardians hadn't seen it coming. Not the relationship, but the partnership. They worked well together and despite Gokudera's constant stream of curses usually directed in Yamamoto's direction, they never needed to communicate in the midst of a battle. It was as if they just _knew_. An intuition that rivaled Tsuna's but only worked on each other.

Gokudera did know when the partnership had escalated, when fighting _alongside_ Yamamoto had mutated into lying _underneath_ Yamamoto, gasping and squirming and calling out his name. It would be impossible to forget the adrenaline coursing through his body as he hit his knees and nearly cut through the idiot's belt in his haste to do something, _anything_, that wasn't murder.

He thought he'd be better at it. The mafia was his entire life. But he couldn't deny the sick taste of bile in the back of his throat as he took the idiot into his mouth, licking and sucking and taking him as deep as he possibly could, whatever he could to get rid of that _taste_. When Yamamoto came, he swallowed, gulping almost greedily until the idiot's knees were shaking and he was soft and there was nothing left. And the idiot had done nothing to stop him or push him away and Gokudera thought that maybe the idiot could taste it too and needed this just as much as he did.

It was never supposed to be anything more than raw, unbridled feeling; biting and moaning and rough thrusts without enough lube. Something to remind them that they were still on Earth, still alive, still able to feel something more than pain.

He supposed it could have been the first time he had allowed the idiot to kiss him that the paradigm had shifted. There was something so intimate about that tangling of tongues and the caress of their lips that couldn't be found in their heavy sweating and Gokudera's howled curses in Italian.

It wasn't just about not feeling numb anymore after that.

It could have been the first time Gokudera allowed the idiot to bandage his wounds in the confined space of his apartment's bathroom, back against cold porcelain, calloused fingers softer and more beautiful than they should have been against his skin.

It probably was the first time that Gokudera allowed Yamamoto to stay in his bed even after they were done grinding against each other, and let him sleep naked and heavy and warm against him and didn't try to convince himself that there was a more platonic reason behind it other than the fact that it felt nice. Felt right. Made _him_ feel right instead of always wrong.

Whenever the metamorphosis had come, it had set them on a path that had led them here and there was no way to turn around.

Gokudera thrust his hips up against Yamamoto's pelvis and arched his back and cried out in a rasping voice made hoarse by lust and smoke and did not think twice when his lips formed the idiot's name against his will. It was not a new sensation but it made Yamamoto tremble with delight every time. He slid his hands along the bomber's sweat slicked sides and folded them in his soft, silver hair and pressed his lips against an exposed adam's apple and whispered against his skin.

_I love you, Hayato_

Gokudera snapped his head up to fix the idiot with his most impressive glare, digging his nails into soft, soft skin with too many scars and demanded that he not say stupid things even as he crossed his ankles behind a strong, baseball and battle sculpted back and pulled them even closer together, pulling the idiot in even deeper, very nearly howling at the feeling.

He could feel the friction of Yamamoto's stomach against him, moving with a rhythm that would only work on him, with him, _in _him. They could never work as well with anyone else and Gokudera _knew_ that even if he didn't know anything else. He did not say the words back. Did not whisper his own declaration against the hot skin of Yamamoto's shoulder as he kissed it to muffle his moans.

Gokudera did not tell the idiot that he loved him as he shuddered with climax and tears leaked from his eyes and he clenched around the idiot in reflex as he rode out the waves of pleasure that he had long since learned he did not need violence to achieve. He did not say it even as the idiot followed him in ecstasy and slumped against him and whispered it again even though Gokudera had distinctly told him not to.

But he did say it when Yamamoto smiled at him, glowing in the aftermath of this thing that was so much more than just sex. He mumbled it against the idiot's collarbone as he curled up against his side and draped himself over the bigger boy and fit better and more comfortably than his own clothes.

_I love you too, Baka._

He wasn't sure if the idiot heard him but it didn't matter because he knew that the _idiot knew_ whether he said it aloud or not. He said it because at some point they had turned a page in their lives and it had become the truth.


	2. The First Time

**God I love these two. I just can't stop with them. **

**These are deeper looks into the evolution of Gokudera and Yamamoto's relationship as presented in Metamorphosis and the three times that Gokudera thinks he may have accidentally fallen in love.**

**I don't own Katekyo Hitman Reborn!**

_**The First time**_

"Don't get any ideas about this, Baka." He hisses as he slams the Rain Guardian against a shadowed wall, hands gripping the front of Yamamoto's shirt so tightly his knuckles are nearly translucent with the lack of blood. He's panting heavily, breath ragged, tears threatening to break free of the dam that his eyelashes impose but he won't let them. Not here. Not now. Not in front of _him. _What he's doing now is weakness enough, he refuses to show any more.

"Goku-Gokudera?" Yamamoto stammers in confusion. He places his hands palms down on the bomber's shoulders but doesn't push. He doesn't understand but at the same time he does in that way that he always has.

"Shut up. Just shut up!" He chokes on his anger and hits his knees so hard on the concrete he swears he hears the bone crack and that quick, sharp pain is almost a relief. _Almost._ But it's not enough and so he keeps going.

He fumbles with the idiot's belt, _fumbles_ as if his entire profession, his skill, his reputation don't revolve around his dexterity. They shouldn't… if something as simple as a buckle, a buckle that the idiot can manage to do and undo every day, can defeat him like this.

He's shaking and glances around their immediate area for the idiot's damn katana, as if slicing his pants off is a viable option, and it's only the slightest increase in pressure against his shoulders that brings him back, just enough to take one rattling deep breath, and he slows down.

He manages to get the leather strap undone, after a few more shaky tries he manages, and he's bringing his face closer before he's even gotten the idiot's zipper down and he can smell the lingering scents of nitroglycerine and tobacco on his fingertips. It's comforting and his shallow breaths become a little more even but the taste in his mouth, the taste of death, is still there.

"Gokudera?"

It's a whisper of uncertainty from above his head and it makes him growl with impatience even as it catches him off guard and makes him hesitate. He can hear the suspicion, the understanding, even under the mask of dumb good humor that the idiot is always wearing.

He doesn't look up, doesn't dare meet those wide, amber eyes. Doesn't think he can bear to face what he might see reflecting back at him. Instead he focuses on getting the idiot's zipper down and sliding loose jeans over slim hips. Yamamoto's gasp as the too cool night air hits his exposed flesh sends Gokudera's pulse racing and spurs him on.

There are no more interruptions after this and Gokudera is thankful for that. His skin is clammy where sweat from an earlier battle has cooled and caused his hair and clothing to become uncomfortably sticky but he ignores this. It is just another feeling, just another feeling that he _can_ handle and so he does.

He wraps delicate fingers around impossibly engorged flesh and does not think of how wrong it is that the idiot is already hard even after what they've just done, he only thinks of how the idiot is all rough and blisters and calluses everywhere but here, where he is smooth and silk and soft and here there is no battle. For Gokudera, for the boy who's been battling everyone his entire life, this is a relief that washes over him in sheets like rain.

He scowls briefly and tightens his grip until it's almost painful, punishing Yamamoto for hi_s_ own stupid, cliché thoughts.

He is not attracted to Yamamoto. This isn't about romance or puppy crushes or even desire. This is about too much adrenaline and half broken hearts and need. They need to feel alive, to experience some sort of human contact that does not end in rivers of thick blood and severed limbs and dim, sightless eyes. The blood pulsing under Gokudera's fingers distracts him from memories of life lost and _that_ is why he's doing this. It is the only reason why.

Gokudera does not know how the idiot feels, back against the rough brick of this random building, and maybe later he might feel some small inkling of guilt for taking so much without asking, _maybe_, but even if he does it will be nothing compared to the painful, tearing twist that's ravaging his gut _right now. _And so now he only strokes the idiot and breathes in his musky scent and does not allow himself to think about it.

He would take a million staring contests with Bianchi over this feeling, but that is not an option. It never was.

He does not take his time and by the way Yamamoto thrusts his hips forward in short, rough jerks that don't fit this persona of the master swordsman he is supposed to be on his way to becoming, Gokudera is sure there is no reason to. He takes the idiot into his mouth all at once, attempting to deep throat him right away and fails, gagging, but he does not allow himself to pull away even as Yamamoto groans loudly above him and fists his big, dumb, baseball hands in his hair.

This is worth the discomfort, he tells himself, _this_ will make it all go away… if only for right now.

His own hands have migrated down the idiot's legs and he's holding on to the backs of Yamamoto's thighs as if they are the only pillars of life keeping his head above water and for all he knows they are. He pulls back far enough to allow himself to breathe and finds his rhythm by listening to his own frantic heartbeat and it's not smooth and it's far from the best either one of them will ever have but they are young and they are desperate to feel and that is enough for both of them right now.

When Yamamoto comes he bucks his hips and slams his head back and does not try to stop the bomber's name from tumbling past his lips and Gokudera cringes but does not quit. He has never done this before, has never thought that he ever would, but as disgusting as the slick feeling across his tongue and sliding down his throat is, it does not taste like death, _Yamamoto_ doesn't taste like death, and that is all that he cares about.

He rests his forehead against the idiot's abdomen for a few seconds too long, breath hot and heavy against Yamamoto's softness, hands clamped like vices around legs made strong by years of baseball, and it's awkward when he finally rocks back on his heels and schools his face to reveal none of the emotion that has been fighting to be let out this entire time. He wipes his mouth with the back of his arm and turns away without meeting Yamamoto's eyes, leaving him, open and exposed, to put himself back together.

He hears the idiot calling after him as he walks away but he does not turn around. He can't. He cannot let Yamamoto see his red rimmed eyes or the way that his hands are fisted in an epic effort to keep from clutching at his stomach and falling to his knees for a second time, to upend the entire contents of his stomach. He cannot turn around because he doesn't think he can bear to face what he knows he'll see. His own pain reflected in those soulful amber eyes that somehow understand so much and so little at the same time.

_**The Kiss**_

The first time that Yamamoto tries to kiss him, Gokudera gives him a black eye that bears the distinct imprint of his Vongola ring on the idiot's cheekbone and refuses to touch him again for two weeks. Until the bruising fades the idiot tells anyone who asks that he got hit with a baseball and he just rubs the back of his neck and smiles when they don't believe that the suspicious looking cuts are, in fact, the imprint of the baseball's stitching. He just laughs it off the way he laughs everything off.

"Ha ha, I guess it does sort of look like Gokudera's storm ring, that's so funny!"

So Gokudera doesn't feel the least bit guilty about it.

He idly contemplates seeing a doctor about the wrenching stomachaches that are occurring between missions and without his sister's provocation but he just pops handfuls of antacids at a time and convinces himself that they have nothing to do with the idiot, never mind the fact that they seem to only occur when he's not around.

There is nothing sweet about their encounters. They come together after missions, after they've completed their tasks but before they've washed the dirt and blood and guilt from their hands, and for Gokudera it's for the same reasons as the first time only now he lets the idiot give back. Because even he can admit that he's never felt so alive as when he's riding high on the crest of his orgasm, skin marked with new and fading bruises, blending together until there's no knowing which ones are from fighting and which ones are from Yamamoto.

He never meets Yamamoto's eyes during these dark and desperate trysts though he has no problem doing so when he's ranting in the idiot's face about some slip he's made that has possibly embarrassed or endangered the Tenth. When all Yamamoto does is offer him the half broken, half hopeful look of a kicked puppy he ignores it or writes it off as his imagination. If the idiot doesn't laugh as much around him anymore it isn't _his_ fault and it doesn't echo around the hollow space of his heart that does not belong to anyone save the Tenth, least of all the idiot.

They are partners, in battle alone, and he can't be held accountable if the idiot doesn't understand that because he gave him fair warning. He _told_ him not to get any ideas.

The second time Yamamoto tries to kiss him he is successful. Gokudera tilts his head and allows the idiot to edge his lips open and slip his tongue between them, teasing a response from him that lasts a full minute before Gokudera comes to his senses and shoves him away, knocking him off the bed where he lands hard on the floor in a tangle of twisted bedclothes and long, naked limbs. Gokudera curls around himself and leans against the headboard and hurls a slew of curses very few of which are in a language that the idiot can understand and are mostly muffled by the pillow that he is clutching to his chest like a shield against the pleasant fluttering beneath his ribcage.

Damn the idiot for taking advantage of the situation. He tells himself that it is not his fault… that he was too sated with sex to realize what was happening. He ignores the way his lips sparked at the touch and the way they feel cold now.

When he finally crawls to the edge of the bed and peers at the man whom he refuses to call his lover, his heart actually skips a beat and he scowls against the furious blush that he can feel painting his alabaster skin and looses a brand new barrage of insults.

The idiot only smiles a big smile that reaches his eyes and makes them glow like polished amber.

"Gokudera kissed me back." He says and laughs at the purple vein that is standing out on the bomber's forehead.

"I did not!" And when his eager protest only makes the idiot smile wider he throws the pillow at him as hard as he can and points furiously towards the door. "Augh! You worthless yakyu baka! Out!"

_**Bandages**_

"Fuck, fuck, _fuck." _He tries to stifle his pained curses with his unblemished forearm but the washroom is small and can barely accommodate him in this condition when he's alone, forget about cramming the oversized baseball freak in here with him. But that is exactly what's happening and he wants to push the idiot out and shove a piece of dynamite into a very intimate place while he's at it but this time it's kind of bad and there are a lot of places that he can't reach on his own and, damn genetics, the idiot's still bigger than him and he doesn't have the strength to try and fight him off right now.

So he leans back against the tub and lets Yamamoto cut away his shirt, because it's just easier that way, and slip off his jeans and he focuses on the soothing sensation of the cold tile against his skin and wishes it would overpower the pain of his burns and the sting of the antiseptic on tender flesh. He watches Yamamoto work through slit eyes and he doesn't feel anything like affection at the gentle caresses or the obvious way that he's trying, _so hard,_ to be careful not to cause Gokudera any extra pain. If he feels _aroused_ at the way Yamamoto's fingertips brush along his undamaged skin as lightly as a feather as he wraps soft gauze around his torso, well that's to be expected.

That's what this _thing_ they have is based on.

But, he tells himself and it's not a protest it's really not, he feels nothing more than maybe turned on and this flutter in his chest as he notices the soft, concerned look in the idiot's eyes and the small, sad grimace on his lips, well it's a symptom of blood loss or a pain induced delusion and nothing more. But this doesn't stop him from leaning into it when Yamamoto cups the back of his head and lightly runs a thumb along his jaw line and edges forward to press their lips together in a sweet and reassuring kiss that seems too comfortable and too right to be shared between two men are not lovers.

_**Sleep**_

He grasps at the back of the idiot's head and pulls their mouths together, entangling their tongues in an unending battle for supremacy and wraps his legs tightly around the idiot's hips that rock back and forth with so much more grace than they had during that first awkward blowjob in an abandoned alley. He runs his fingers down the muscles of the idiot's back but does not scratch and when they are flipped and Gokudera is straddling him and Yamamoto's fingertips find purchase just above the swell of Gokudera's hipbones they do not squeeze with such intensity that they leave behind purple imprints of his hands.

There was no mission today. There was no mission the last time they moved together like this either. The scent of lingering death does not rest above their heads and invade their nostrils and dance upon their taste buds. Their moments of passion are no longer reserved for forgetting or remembering or whatever it was that they needed that had spurred this on in the first place, they don't know anymore.

They come together, a rare occurrence, but neither of them voices their amazement at the anomaly aloud, because that would insinuate a connection that does not exist between them, a relationship of sorts with emotions outside of the ones necessary to keep their unacknowledged partnership alive. They are lovers… that much cannot be ignored or kept down but there is no agreement between them. Either one of them could find solace in the arms of anyone else. Both of them have the freedom to appreciate the affections of any random woman on the street or even one of the other guardians if it came down to that.

No matter that after almost two years of this thing neither of them has ever done that. Neither of them has so much as felt the need to.

This denial has been the elephant in the room with them for too long and while Yamamoto has felt its overbearing presence crushing him, Gokudera is very good at fighting things that might get in his way, which this stupid _thing_ with Yamamoto certainly would.

So, before now, Gokudera pretended he did not want to touch the idiot in ways that didn't ultimately lead to sex, intimate caresses across his skin that served no purpose other than reminding Gokudera that the idiot was still there after all this time.

So, before now, Gokudera returned to where it all started with a sexual ambush that was supposed to mean nothing to either of them. Quickies in between meetings that, while not anonymous, bore no resemblance to the soft encounters of their bedrooms and late marathon sessions with no time for rest.

Now Gokudera is exhausted, wrung dry by his attempts to keep things between them purely physical. A constant barrage of attacks has left him open and vulnerable but he is the Storm and that is how he fights and it hasn't yet dawned on him that what he has with Yamamoto is not a war. Not anymore.

Yamamoto has come to anticipate Gokudera's moods and actions like he _knows_ him and when he realized that maybe the idiot really might, Gokudera was terrified masked with anger and locked himself in his room for three days and was only drawn out by the reassuring voice of his Tenth even though with all his amazing intuition Tsuna could not ascertain the reason why Gokudera locked himself away in the first place.

They lay together for what seems like hours after this shaking realization of their mutual passion. Yamamoto does not make any move to remove his arm from where it is draped across Gokudera's waist and Gokudera does not shake him off even after his breathing has slowed and his heart has calmed and he feels his eyelids weighing heavy with the need for sleep.

When Yamamoto finally shifts he creates a space between them that sucks in the cold like a vacuum and makes Gokudera shiver with loss. The idiot pushes up on one arm and does not quite remove himself from the warm cocoon they've created, hesitant almost with hope that Gokudera might stop him.

"Do you want me to leave, Hayato?" The idiot whispers so softly there's a chance it may never have been uttered at all.

"Don't call me that, Baka." He mumbles into his pillow with just a hint of venom, but he reaches behind himself to grab Yamamoto's big, dumb, baseball hand and pull his arm back across his waist. He tells himself that he does it for the warmth and nothing else.

Gokudera pretends to be asleep already when he feels the idiot quit hesitating and curl up against him, stupid grin pressing against his nape, and does not allow Yamamoto to see his own soft smile, the one he has _never _seen but is only reserved for him, as their breaths become even and they both drift away.


End file.
